(Image: Google Maps)
On December 6, 1917, Finland declared independence from Russia. To celebrate the 100th anniversary of that event, its friendly neighbor, Norway, would like to give it a mountain.
The Norwegian government is considering ceding the peak of Mount Halti, which is on the Norwegian-Finnish border, to Finland. At 1,365 meters tall, Mount Halti would become the tallest mountain in the country, nudging out another mountain, which is 7 meters shorter. The Guardian reports:
The originator of the idea is a retired geophysicist and government surveyor, Bjørn Geirr Harsson, 76, who learned last year that Finland would celebrate the 100th anniversary of its independence from Russia on 6 December 2017 and recalled being puzzled by the location of the border when he flew over Halti in the 1970s.
Harsson wrote to the ministry of foreign affairs in July 2015, pointing out that the gesture would cost Norway a “barely noticeable” 0.015 sq km of its national territory and make Finland very happy.
-via reddit, which includes this important point of etiquette: